Big Games

The Super Bowl comes up Sunday, as you may have heard. 

BrotherBlog is a longtime Seattle resident and reluctant sports fan, mostly by marriage. He gets extra credit for knowing not only that his local team had made it to the big game but also knowing who the opponent will be. 

If you haven't been paying attention, it'll be BB's Seattle Seahawks against the New England Patriots. TigerBlog asked his brother for his prediction for the game, and this is what he came back with:

"I don't know. It'll be what it'll be." 

Yeah, the upcoming hours and hours of pregame shows across multiple networks have nothing on BrotherBlog. There's genius in his analysis. Must be the lawyer in him. 

TigerBlog's preseason Super Bowl prediction was the Bills over the Lions. They should let those two teams play just to see if TB would have been correct. 

Given how bad his predictions were for the preseason, he's probably going to be way off on this one, but hey, here goes: Seattle 31, New England 21. 

TigerBlog will watch the game, even if it's not the game he's most looking forward to seeing this weekend. It's not even in the top two. 

Both of those have the words "Princeton" and "Penn" in them. And they both involve basketball. 

The Princeton women are home tonight at 7 against Penn. The men's game will be tomorrow at the Palestra. 

This weekend will see all Ivy League teams play once, against the team that has been their traditional travel partner. These games mark the start of the second trip through the 14-game round robin, which will end with four men's teams and four women's team on their way to Cornell for the league tournament. 

Who will those teams be? 

On the women's side, there are, not surprisingly, three teams who are already pretty much locked in — Princeton, Columbia and Harvard. The Tigers start the weekend alone in first place at 6-1, one game ahead of the 5-2 Lions and Crimson. 

A year ago, all three of them reached the NCAA tournament, something that was unprecedented in Ivy basketball history. This year, they're all looking to get back, with current NET rankings of 44 (Princeton), 59 (Columbia) and 66 (Harvard). 

The battle for fourth place has Brown at 4-3, one game ahead of Penn and Cornell. Princeton opened its Ivy season back on Jan. 3 with a 74-68 win over the Quakers at the Palestra in a game where Princeton led big early, trailed in the fourth quarter and then rallied to win it. 

Speaking of the Palestra, the Tiger and Quaker men will play there tomorrow at 2. 

If the women's race has some clear definition to it, the men's side is a complete free for all. Princeton is one game out of first place entering the weekend at 4-3, tied with Dartmouth, behind 5-2 Yale and Harvard. 

There are three teams one game back of the Tigers at 3-4 (Cornell, Columbia, Penn). That's seven teams separated by two games at the midway point of the league schedule. TB has no way of tracking how many times in league history that the league standings have had this many teams this close at this point, but he's willing to guess that the answer is "not a lot, if ever."

Princeton and Penn also opened their Ivy seasons against each other on the men's side, back on Jan. 5, when the Tigers came from 14 points down to go up by 14 and then hold on for a 78-76 victory.  

As you know, that win gave Princeton the lead in the all-time series for the first time ever. Entering the game tomorrow, it is now Princeton 127, Penn 126. 

Now is not the time to focus on historical context, though. The race to Ithaca is starts its second lap this weekend. 

It figures to be a crazy run to the finish.